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influence and membership have spread abroad. In 1999, after ten thousand
Falun Gong members participated in a silent vigil outside the Beijing
compound where China‘s top leaders live and work, the group was
condemned as a ―heretical cult organization‖ (the term was also used in
Confucian times for ideologically heterodox sects and superstitions) and an
―evil cult.‖ Thousands of adherents were imprisoned and some three hundred
were reportedly confined in mental hospitals.20
Although huge antigovernment antiwar demonstrations are tolerated in the United States,
an entrenched, defensive ruling party of a quasi-totalitarian autocracy is likely to react
differently. The giant 1999 rally, transpiring outside of residential party compounds (whose
locations were generally secret) was obviously interpreted as representing a dangerous
threat to the regime. What had been previously accepted and praised was suddenly
extremely stigmatized. From 1982 to 1999 traditional qigong practices had been widely
promoted and endorsed in China by reputable scholars. Although originally promoted as
secular health practices, a religious awakening in China may have led to an increasing
religious significance being conferred on the practices. In late 1999, however, the regime‘s
original proscription of Falun Gong was ―extended to all qigong groups regardless of their
beliefs or leadership,‖21 although enforcement of prohibitions of exercises not performed
under the specific auspices of Falun Gong has been regionally variable.
The Chinese authorities clearly reacted to the mass mobilization of Falun Gong as a threat
to their regime, particularly in a global context in which most other Communist regimes
were in trouble and shortly disappeared. The demonstrative, defiant behavior of Falun Gong
since its proscription has no doubt reinforced the authoritarian regime‘s perception of a
subversive conspiracy. ―The brutal suppression of Falun Gong continued through 2002 ....
yet despite thousands of arrests, quick trials followed by harsh prison sentences, and the
involuntary commitment of large numbers of defiant practitioners to mental hospitals, the
movement managed to stage numerous spectacular protests which included numerous
hijackings of government TV cable signals and even the disruption of nation-wide satellite
television broadcasts.‖22
The authoritarian regime has largely responded to the growth of Falun Gong as a subversive
political threat. To legitimate its severe persecution it has depicted Falun Gong as a wild and
pathological threat to society in general and to individuals. However, it wasn‘t until a huge
demonstration and mobilization appeared to threaten an insecure authoritarian regime that
severe persecution with thousands of arrests and hundreds of involuntary commitments
ensued. Falun Gong became absolutely insupportable because, in the context of an insecure
autocratic regime, its demonstrative tactics, its impressive mass mobilization, and it
perceived infiltration of middling and even higher party ranks appeared to pose a definite
political threat, although this might not have been the case in the context of a more secure
democratic regime.
To justify an image of Falun Gong congruent with that purveyed by the Chinese regime,
Rosedale cites some tragedies including the twelve-year-old girl‘s suicide. Rosedale‘s
reference to ―suicidal conformity‖ in Falun Gong (and his comparison to Heaven‘s Gate) is
unwarranted as only a tiny minority of Falun Gong members has committed suicide and no
evidence is presented by Rosedale of either systematic suicide training or ―mass suicide‖ in
Falun Gong. Bracketing the difficulties with accepting automatically at face value ―facts‖
purveyed by a manipulative, authoritarian regime, this may indeed indicate some degree of
apocalyptic frenzy among Chinese Falun Gong members. (We shall note later a warning on
this score by an important researcher on NRMs who has studied Canadian practitioners, and
who, while continuing to denounce persecution, is concerned about increasing
apocalypticism and politicization). It should be noted, however, that the alarming stories

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about the internal milieu of Falun Gong pertain largely to phenomena subsequent to severe
persecution.
Persecution and Apocalyptic Frenzy
At this point it is necessary to give some attention to the historical evidence for severe
persecution having the effect of producing or substantially extrapolating apocalyptic
excitation and its sometimes extreme behavioral concomitants. In the context of the
Roman persecution of Christians, the apocalyptic, prophetic, and ecstatic Montanist sect (a
sort of movement within a movement) emerged in the second century in Phrygia (in Asia
Minor). ―Montanism blended the prophetic and orgiastic native Phrygian religion with
exalted preaching about the approaching end. The orthodox [Christian] clergy took
fright.‖23 But why did Montanism develop? Referring to the work of Eusebias of Caesarea,
the first great Church historian, a modern scholar notes, ―we can probably date the
emergence of Montanism to circa 172 and associate it with a reaction against the pogroms
and persecutions that were being inflicted there on the Christians.‖24
Ecstatic and glossalalic, the prophet Montanus traveled with two female sub-prophets,
Maximilla and Priscilla. ―People summoned by the prophets to attend the inauguration of
the Millennium abandoned homes, families and work to stream into the countryside. Wars
and rumors of wars were freely prophesied, and death by martyrdom was prepared for by
continence and fasting was enjoined as the command of the Holy Spirit.‖25 Given both the
apocalyptic origins of Christianity (i.e., the earliest Christians had expected Christ‘s
imminent return) as well as the threatening persecutions, Montanus‘ message did not
appear all that implausible.
The Christians of Lyons were somewhat sympathetic to Montanism. ―They too believed that
the approach of antichrist and the end of all things was near and that their own sufferings
were an indication of this.‖26 ―The new prophecy spoke for an age that awaited the end of
the age.‖27 However, after peaking in the second and third centuries, Montanism declined
particularly in the cities and became mainly a religion of the Christian peasantry. It
retreated back to Phyrgia where it had started. The remnant of Phyrgian Montanism was
later persecuted by the early Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The later
Phyrgian Montanists responded by burning themselves in their churches,28 an act which
may have begun a Byzantine-Muscovite tradition of incendiary collective suicide in a context
of rigorous persecution. This tradition culminated in the huge mass suicides associated with
the schismatic, severely persecuted Old Believer movement, on which the present author
has written and which may have entailed twenty thousand deaths in the late seventeenth
century and two or three thousand deaths in each of several particular spectacular
incidents.29 In an article on Russian Messianism Vatro Murvar describes the rationale of
ritual suicide in an emergent Russian tradition of martyrdom:
The basic doctrine, professed repeatedly in various periods by religious
virtuosi, was that true believer‘ commitment calls for baptism by fire, gar,
through which the seal of Antichrist is finally broken ....The favorite way of
practicing gar was to lock themselves up and perish together by setting fire to
the building during the religious ceremony.30
Interestingly not all the various communities of Russian Old Believers during the most
stressful period near the turn of the eighteenth century were suicidal. There were
―moderates‖ who denounced the suicidal proclivities of extremists and accused suicidal
leaders of tricking their followers into death pacts through deception (false reports of troop
movements) and hallucinogenic drugs. These in-movement critics sounded somewhat like
contemporary ―anticultists,‖ as I have noted.31